Yirrinyina #2. Yunupiŋu, Gurtha, 93x35cm Bark

The totemic significance of fire to the Yunupiŋu family of the Gumatj clan is paramount. It is said that the Gumatj clan language, Dhuwalandja, is itself the tongue of flame. This language, or tongue, like the flame, cuts through all artifice. It incinerates dishonesty leaving only the bones of the truth.

In the initial interface between Yolŋu sacred art and the Western art world an early decision was made on the Yolŋu side to use figurative imagery to cover the miny’tji in paintings. This ‘miny’tji’ is the source and record of the sacred identity of the law and the land portrayed. Throughout the ensuing decades there has been a conscious distinction between painting done in a ceremonial context and that for the ‘outside world’. In all the latter cases the ‘background’ design has been ‘covered’ by a figurative representation relevant to the law therein.

This usually takes the form of a totemic species such as crocodile or shark for instance. The reasoning is to protect uninitiated people from the power of unadulterated miny’tji which is the vessel of sacred ancestral forces. This work is solely the miny’tji of the Gumatj embodying gurtha or fire. The relaxation of this convention has happened only since 2000 and particularly in renderings on Larrakitj or memorial poles. It may be that as the viewer cannot see the entirety of any pole from one vantage this is less ‘dangerous’ than a two dimensional surface but that is only speculation from an outside perspective.

In ancestral times, the leaders of Yirritja moiety clans used fire for the first time during a ceremony at Ngalarrwuy in Gumatj country. This came about as fire brought to the Madarrpa clan country by Bäru the ancestral crocodile, spread north and swept through the ceremonial ground. From this ceremonial ground the fire spread further to other sites.

Various ancestral animals were affected and reacted in different ways. These animals became sacred totems of the Gumatj people and the areas associated with these events became important sites. The diamond patterning is the ‘miny’tji’, motif or sacred clan design, of this clan and this place. It summons the theme of this fire. The Gumatj clan design associated with these events, a diamond design, represents fire; the red flames, the white smoke and ash, the black charcoal and the yellow dust.

Clans owning connected parts of this sequence of ancestral events share variations of this diamond design. There are other levels of meaning including an analysis of the constituent parts of Guku, bush honey which resides in the hollow Stringybark tree; the skin, blood, fat and bone of a Gumatj person; the mud and weeds of a billabong close to this place which is a home of Baru, the crocodile who itself is a Gumatj power totem metamorphosed through fire.

This is a Fire of supernatural intensity. So powerful that it transforms the land it touched for all time. its identity is etched into every atom of Gumatj land it spread, or was carried, to. Or more accurately the identity of the land holds the memory of The Fire (capitalised like ‘The Flood’ of the Bible). The Victorian fires help us understand the message carried in this ancient pattern. This design is sacred because it reveals a hidden secret. After all the trees have grown back and the living witnesses have died there will be no outward sign of such a cataclysm. But long after that the land still remembers; it’s DNA permanently altered. The incomprehensible power of that fire is burnt into the land forever though all else is healed. It is important to remember.

Fire is also domesticity and the hearth, light, warmth, cooked food, security. The flaming tongues are a language of creativity and truth and the sparks are offspring and generative.

In many ways, the harvesting and material production to create bark paintings is an art in itself. The bark is stripped from Eucalyptus stringybark. It is generally harvested from the tree during the wet season. Two horizontal slices and a single vertical slice are made into the tree, and the bark is carefully peeled off. The smooth inner bark is kept and placed in a fire. After firing, the bark is flattened and weighted to dry flat. Once dry, the bark becomes a rigid surface and is ready to paint upon.

Djawakan Marika, Yilpirr Wanambi, Wukun Wanambi and Nambatj Munu+ïgurr Harvesting stringybark for artists Photo credit: David Wickens

Wanapa Munu+ïgurr, Yilpirr Wanambi and Wukun Wanambi harvesting stringybark. Photo credit: David Wickens

Wanapa and Nambatj Munu+ïgurr firing a bark to start the flattening process. Photo credit: David Wickens

Arnhem Land paintings are characterised by the use of fine crosshatched patterns of clan designs that carry ancestral power: the crosshatched patterns, known as rarrk in the west and miny’tji in the east, produce an optical brilliance reflecting the presence of ancestral forces.

These patterns are composed of layers of fine lines, laid onto the surface of the bark using a short-handled brush of human hair, just as they are painted onto the body for ceremony.

Rerrkiwaŋa Munuŋgurr painting her husbands design Gumatj fire or Gurtha. Photo credit: Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre

The artist’s palette consists of red and yellow ochres of varying intensity and hues, from flat to lustrous, as well as charcoal and white clay(pictured above). Pigments that were once mixed with natural binders such as egg yolk have, since the 1960s, been combined with water-soluble wood glues.

Naminapu Maymuru White collecting gapan white clay used for painting. Photo credit: Edwina Circuitt

Djul’djul is the daughter of the famous Gälpu clan artist Mithinarri Gurruwiwi. She is a very precise and knowledgeable wood carver and painter. Together with her sister Manany and brother Watjuku (deceased) they have inherited a lot of painting knowledge and skill from their father. All three artists also share the same Gumatj mother, Duwambu Burarrwaŋa.

Djul’djul’s husband was Burrŋupurrŋu (Bruce) Wunuŋmurra (deceased), a highly respected yiḏaki player and maker. She painted the yiḏaki he made, often with Gälpu clan designs from her own clan. These designs sometimes feature Wititj the olive python, djaykuŋ the file-snake and guḏurrku the brolga. At other times they are decorated with beautiful columns of diamonds, the sacred miny’tji belonging to the Dhaḻwaŋu clan, representing the freshwater system where their creation ancestor Barama emerged from the water.

These yiḏaki are highly priced among collectors and players world-wide, being commonly referred to as some of the best works available. Djul’djul’s bark paintings, ḻarrakitj and carvings are now becoming sought after by dealers and collectors for their fine attention to detail. Recently she has also been producing worrwurr (owls) in collaboration with her sister Manany. 

In recent years, Didiwarr, one of her sons, has been making yiḏaki that she has been painting. These instruments are often decorated with a coiled djaykuŋ at the distal end. This is a new collaboration, continuing the legacy of their work with Burrŋupurrŋu.

Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre is the Indigenous community-controlled art centre of Northeast Arnhem Land. Located in Yirrkala, a small Aboriginal community on the north-eastern tip of the Top End of the Northern Territory, approximately 700km east of Darwin. Our primarily Yolŋu (Aboriginal) staff of around twenty services Yirrkala and the approximately twenty-five homeland centres in the radius of 200km.

In the 1960’s, Narritjin Maymuru set up his own beachfront gallery from which he sold art that now graces many major museums and private collections. He is counted among the art centre’s main inspirations and founders, and his picture hangs in the museum. His vision of Yolŋu-owned business to sell Yolŋu art that started with a shelter on a beach has now grown into a thriving business that exhibits and sells globally.

Buku-Larrŋgay –  “the feeling on your face as it is struck by the first rays of the sun (i.e. facing East) 

Mulka – “a sacred but public ceremony.”

In 1976, the Yolŋu artists established ‘Buku-Larrŋgay Arts’ in the old Mission health centre as an act of self-determination coinciding with the withdrawal of the Methodist Overseas Mission and the Land Rights and Homeland movements.

In 1988, a new museum was built with a Bicentenary grant and this houses a collection of works put together in the 1970s illustrating clan law and also the Message Sticks from 1935 and the Yirrkala Church Panels from 1963.

In 1996, a screen print workshop and extra gallery spaces was added to the space to provide a range of different mediums to explore. In 2007, The Mulka Project was added which houses and displays a collection of tens of thousands of historical images and films as well as creating new digital product. 

Still on the same site but in a greatly expanded premises Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre now consists of two divisions; the Yirrkala Art Centre which represents Yolŋu artists exhibiting and selling contemporary art and The Mulka Project which acts as a digital production studio and archiving centre incorporating the museum.

Text courtesy: Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre